This is a brief product review of the De’Longhi CTO4 Argento Flora 4 Slice Toaster (boy what product name!) and my personal experiences with it.
Background
We recently had our kitchen refurbished and as part of this the kitchen unit colour was changed to sage green — so naturally we wanted new appliances that matched.
After some searching around we found a number of manufacturers that made products in shades of green, De’Longhi being one of them.
So we ordered this toaster from them:
Inital Impressions
Unpacking the toaster revealed the colour was an “okay” match for our kitchen units, but that was only one of the criteria for selection. Build quality was reasonable with the main body of the toaster being painted metal, but the “chrome” controls seem to be plastic and they all feel a little flimsy.
The “speedometer” style dials for setting the toast time (and hence how toasted your bread is) look a little odd and are not especially reassuring in operation.
A quick check shows the toasting mechanism does not allow for “peeking” at the toast — i.e. being able to lift the toast up while toasting to see how things are progressing (more on this later).
But of course, being able to toast bread/muffins etc was what this was designed for, so let’s see how we get on with that.
Let’s Make Toast!
We’re going to use standard Warburtons sliced white “toastie” bread for this test.
Here’s a slice or two:
A quick measure shows the bread slices to be 14.5cm or about 5.75in.
Plopping the bread in the toaster reveals this sort of look:
Pushing the toaster handle down is simple and straightforward and toasting begins as you’d expect.
I allowed the toast cycle to run through to completion and for the bread to pop up. At which point it looked like this:
As you might be already able to see, there is a section at the top of the bread that is not toasted. Taking the slices out and having a quick look, reveals this:
Not only are the two sides of the two slices not toasted evenly, but there is a definite section at the top that has not been toasted at all.
By my measurements, the De’Longhi has failed to toast approximately 3cm or 1.25in of bread.
So, not so good at the toasting so far.
Dangerous Toasting Ahead!
However things get way, way worse if you dare to try toasting something like a crumpet or muffin or fruit bread. At this point, you are going to be risking your life using the toaster as getting the toasted product back out after toasting requires the use of some sort of “toaster tong”.
What do I mean by this? Well, in our house we like to toast things other than bread, such as crumpets or as I’m about to explain, fruit bread.
The fruit bread I am using for this is “Irish Fruit Loaf”:
So, the size of this loaf is actually relatively small at approximately 8.5cm or 3.25in. However, I’d like to state here and now that our previous toaster coped with this bread and other toasting products absolutely fine, so this set our expectations of the De’Longhi also being able to deal with it.
The toasting process proceeds slightly better than with the white sliced bread as being smaller, it toasts more evenly. However, it’s at the point the toasting completes that things get dangerous.
When the mechanism pops up at the end of toasting, the bread is not presented above the top edge of the toaster and cannot be grasped with fingers. See the picture below:
The toaster at this point, is of course hot to the touch and there is no chance of retrieving your toast with your fingers.
I would imagine it’s entirely possible that people will look around their kitchen for something to help retrieve their bread when faced with this situation. I sincerely hope they do not reach for anything made of metal or fishing the toast out of the De’Longhi might be the last thing they ever do!
We use these wooden spatulas instead, what a delight!
Summary
As you can probably tell, we are less than impressed with our De’Longhi toaster and it is a constant source of annoyance in our kitchen at breakfast time.
We contacted De’Longhi about these issues and they responded saying that this toaster was never marketed as being able to toast anything but bread, but as you can see above, it is barely even able to do that — toasting opposite sides of the bread differently and leaving a thick band of bread untoasted at the top edge.
In response to our issues with retrieving smaller items from the toaster, such as fruit bread or crumpets, De’Longhi claim they never advertised a “peeking feature” and that the ability to raise the bread up, either during toasting, or after toasting was never a feature of this toaster.
However, I’d argue that being able to get the product out of the toaster safely is surely something that we should all expect.
We previously had a Dualit toaster that had what I’ve referred to as a “peek” feature and of course, never had any issues with being able to retrieve toast at the end of the toasting cycle as a result. Additionally the mechanism allowed the product being toasted to be lifted up during toasting to check on progress, something that cannot be done with the De’Longhi without cancelling the toasting process completely.
Overally, we sincerely regret spending 50 pounds on this De’Longhi toaster and the impression it has left with us will make us think twice about ever buying a product from them again. The features it offers and its toasting ability would be something I’d expect from a budget toaster, but not one coasting this amount of money — buyer beware!
